


nature's first green

by easystreets



Category: The Outsiders - All Media Types, The Outsiders - S. E. Hinton
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Coming Out, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Read Author's Note For Warnings!, Tenderness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:22:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26983588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/easystreets/pseuds/easystreets
Summary: It's like he was meant to meet Dally. Like some sort of strange God had decided: Dally loved Johnny, and Johnny loved Dally.-Or: How Dally and Johnny met. Featuring vigilante justice, the debatable legitimacy of names, and the caretaking of wounds.
Relationships: Johnny Cade/Dallas Winston
Comments: 4
Kudos: 48





	nature's first green

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warning for: the word "queer" and society's general attitude towards homosexuality at the time, which was: Not Great. Any of the themes that were in the movie/book also show up here, including: underage drinking, brief mentions of abuse and I'm pretty sure Johnny and Dally smoke. 
> 
> This is my version of Dally's backstory. Title is-- because it can't not be-- a line from Robert Frost's "Nothing Gold Can Stay". I don't claim ownership of any of the characters or rights to anything.

The first time Johnny sees Dally-- really, _really_ sees him-- is when he’s hidden half behind a brick wall, watching Dally turn Soc teeth into dust with his fists, watching Dally tear Ralph Lauren Polo Shirts and turn address books into confetti with the sharp end of his pocket knife.

Of course, then, Johnny doesn’t know it’s Dally, doesn’t even know who Dallas is. He’s waiting for Ponyboy, who takes Advanced Placement after school on Tuesdays until 5:30 and has swimming lessons Mondays and Thursdays from 3:45 till half-past four. Johnny is nobody to Dallas, but Dally-- with the brown hair, with the crooked nose (Johnny would bet all the money and lint in his pockets that he’s broken it once before at the very least), with the bloody lip and the godless, savage look in his eyes--, Dally is a hero to Johnny.

“Don’t you ever say that about him again.” says Dally to the broken pile of boys on the ground, stuffing blood-splattered money into the pockets of his torn jeans, wiping his hands on his legs. “You hear me?”

Dally doesn’t actually wait to see if they’ve heard them, just turns around the corner and knocks smack into Johnny.

“Thank you,” Johnny says. The guy’s wearing honest-to-God cowboy boots and his nose is dripping blood onto the pavement. _Thank you_ is all he can bring himself to say.

“These guys ever mess with you before?” Dally says, pulling out a lighter and fumbling in his pockets for a smoke.

“Uh--” Johnny pauses, tries to find the truth. Yeah, the Socs call him a queer all the time. It’s skin off his back; he gets called worse at home. Sometimes, Ponyboy’ll cry on the walk home if they say it, especially with that other f-word that burns heavy in Johnny’s mind, but it’s not the worst thing a Soc has ever done to him. Nobody ever gave a damn if Johnny Cade got called a queer until now. “Yeah.”

“Bunch of assholes.” Dally says, shaking his head resolutely. He’s walking somewhere. Johnny isn’t sure where, but he’s glad to follow. The clock hanging in the window of Thomson Groceries says it’s only quarter to five anyway. “You see I smashed his Rolex?”

“Nice,” Johnny nods. “He’s gonna give ya payback in the hallway tomorrow.”

“Nah,” Dally says, like it’s not even a question. Like it’s up to him whether he gets pushed around by a group of Socs, hands passing over him like he’s up for auction. “I dropped out and I aint even from here anyway.”

Johnny grins at that. “Where the hell are ya from? How’d you end up here?”

“New York. But I went all over, really. Foster care and allathat.”

Foster care is the other big F-word in his life. Foster care is what plagues the Curtises, what keeps Darry up in the kitchen with his big clunky calculator at night. Foster care is why Pony tries so hard to keep up in school and why Soda dropped out and why Johnny would rather sleep on the Curtises couch than in his own damn bed at home.

“Wow,” Johnny says, and then stares down at his own scuffed shoes. “I’m Johnny. Johnny Cade.”

“I’m Dallas.” Dally says, shaking his hand with bruised and bloody knuckles. "Dally if you'd like," he says quietly. 

“They must be killing you.” Johnny holds on a moment too long. Dally says nothing, just smiles all secret, ducks his head down like he's shy or something.

“Been worse,” Dally says, but he doesn’t object when Johnny walks them both to Pike’s Pharmacy and Convenience, just stands lookout as Johnny swipes a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a package of Band-Aids, and finally, a can of cherry Coke once he’s sure that Mr. Pike is busy with a paying customer.

They sit in the park behind the school, watch as kids play in the dugout sandpit and dig up treasures: cigarette filters; forgotten 2B pencils with names half-carved in them and the erasers bitten off; discarded lighters and forgotten, faded toys. Tulsa is a terrible place to be, Johnny thinks. Nobody comes here by choice. Deadlands for miles and dirty rich people and brokeback poor and empty desperation everywhere. And yet Dally is here, some sort of angry contrarian who traveled cross-country just to end up in the same alleyway where poor Johnny Cade with the bad parents and the slicked-back hair was bein’ called a queer.

“Let me help you.” Life has a funny way of figuring itself out, he supposes. It’s like they were meant to meet; like every beating Johnny ever got led him to this: to fixing up a broken boy's hands. The rubbing alcohol stings and he tells his new friend Dally so but even then he hisses and presses his lips together when Johnny pours it over his cut-up knuckles. He doesn’t want him to hurt anymore, so Johnny quickly wraps each roughed-up finger with a Band-Aid before cracking open the cherry Coke and offering Dally the first sip.

“Boy do I look tough,” Dally says, grinning at his mangled hands. He takes a gulp of Coke, face wincing as he does. “Coke tastes different here.”

“Yeah sure,” laughs Johnny, because it’s Coke, how’s it _taste different_ , but then their wrists collide as Dally passes him the can and he can feel Dally’s eyes on him as he swallows the first freezing cold sip, and yeah, the Coke tastes different today. The sun is brighter; the dried blood on Dally’s shirt might as well be Technicolor.

“See!” Dally says. "It's good different."

They talk for twenty minutes under the unforgiving grey sky. Dally was originally born in Dallas, Texas. He’s lived in Arizona, Wisconsin, New York, a bone-cold place called Manitoba up in Canada, New York again, Kansas, and finally, here, on account of he ran dead out of money and got tired sleeping on freight trains. He says things like _liable_ and _kiddo_ and says he’s never lost a fight before (“I was made to take a beating,”). He has a kid sister living in New Mexico that he misses a bunch, on account of the Child Services people split them up. His favorite movie is Born To Be Bad and he wants those exact words (“B-o-r-n t-o b-e b-a-d. Across my collarbones in big black letters.”) tattooed on himself once he finds a tattoo artist who’ll do it for cheap and isn’t a drunkard.

Johnny doesn’t say much about himself. He has a friend named Ponyboy. (“Really. Says so on his birth certificate!”) He isn’t that bright on account of he has trouble reading but would like to finish high school at least. The Socs beat on him sometime but mostly stick to the older boys in his gang-- at this, Dally lights up, smiles quietly to himself. He doesn’t much like being called a queer, but he’ll take it over a rumble any day. (“Sticks and stones,” Johnny hums.)

“They only call _you_ a queer?”

“Well, yeah mostly me when I’m with my friend Pony or by myself. Without the other guys.”

“I understand,” Dally nods. “Got called that plus a bunch of other things back in New York mostly when I wasn't running with anyone. Pushed around for it too when I spent a month in juvie. Don’t let ‘em get to ya.”

“I try.” Johnny says. “Do you… do you get called a queer now? Like, by Socs and just regular people?” The word is foreign on his tongue, hurts when he says it.

“Listen, kiddo,” Dally says. Their legs are so close together on the grass that Johnny can feel the nervous jitter running through Dally’s leg like a livewire, and Johnny thinks, what? How can you possibly be terrified? Johnny is small and wiry and inconsequential. Dally is tall and strong and bold in a way that Johnny definitely could love but never possibly be. “I am a queer, I suppose. Been strange that way all of my life. Never had a girlfriend.” He laughs dryly at that. “Never wanted a girlfriend.”

And-- wow. Johnny’s never met an actual queer before. (He’s never met someone who’s felt the same sort of strange as him.) He pauses and listens: Dally’s shallow breaths; the school-bell chiming loud; children chattering in the playground.

“That’s-- that’s alright,” Johnny says. “I mean, sometimes I think I might be.”

“Don’t go around telling anyone.” Dally says. He knows for a fact (Dally just told him, and his word is as good to Johnny as the God honest truth) that Dally is only two years his senior, but right now Dally’s face is dead serious, grey and gaunt in the pale light of outside so that he looks much older. “About me or you. It’s not a bad thing it’s just-- I don’t wanna end up dead in a farmer’s field or something.”

“Yeah.” Johnny says. Well. He never thought he’d actually tell someone that. He thought it would be one of those things that just swam around in his head and he had to ignore. “I won’t. Promise ya, Dally.”

“Thank you.” Dally coughs up. They’re all quiet for a moment, watching as the kids stream out of the school until Johnny spots Ponyboy and his familiar stack of books stumbling towards them.

“D’ya wanna meet my friend Ponyboy?” Johnny says, standing up and away from Dally so that they’re not so close.

“His name isn’t really Ponyboy. Who the hell names a little damn baby Ponyboy?” Dally says, but he still stands up and reaches out to shake Pony’s hand.

Pony grins-- his arms are all full of complicated homework and stacks of books borrowed from the library that are, as Dally would say, liable to give Johnny a headache.

“My parents did. I got a brother named Sodapop, too.”

“Sodapop!” Dally laughs. "Got a sister named Pepsi?"

“Dead serious,” Pony says. “Hey, what’s your name again?”

“Dallas like Texas.”

“And you’re sayin’ my name’s funny,” Pony says, but there’s no heat in it. Dally walks with them until they’re almost at the Curtises. Soda’s on the porch, mending a hole in a pair of shorts when they walk up.

“Soda, you mind signing this test for me?” Pony thrusts all his homework and all of his books (he’ll have enough stories to read Johnny to sleep for at least the next week) onto the rocking chair that’s been on their porch since the two of them were babies. “This is Dally, he’s new here. All the way from New York.”

“New York?” Soda asks, looking him up and down. “You staying at a hotel?” He says, and Johnny can hear the real question: _you have money?_

“Nah,” Dally says. “I’ve been sleepin’ out in this church halfway out of town. Isn’t that bad. But I got cash tonight.”

“Stay here,” Soda offers. “Me and my brothers won’t mind it. Johnny can share the couch with ya.”

“Really?” Dally says. “You don’t have to go to the bother.”

“Nah, you’re good.” Soda nods at him. “You’re good.”

Dally smiles, and walks back into town with Johnny to buy them all burgers for dinner with the bloody money he took from the Socs. They don’t say anything this time, just smoke cigarettes and brush shoulders with each other.

Dinner is great; the best meal Johnny’s had in months. All he usually ever gets up to eating is reduced lunches and bowls of oatmeal, like in that Charles Dickens book Pony read for English class. Darry says nothing when he notices the extra guest at the table, but allows Pony and Johnny each a small bottle of beer. It tastes awful, but he clinks glasses with everyone anyway and Dally teaches them how to toast to their futures.

At nine o’clock, when Soda’s three beers in and his feet are on the tablecloth while he sings bits and pieces of songs off the radio ( _April's love is for the very young, every star's a wishin' star that shines for youuuuuu_ ) while Pony’s showing Dally old family photos (“See! His name really is Sodapop. This is Dad’s Marine’s photo; that’s Mom before she was married to him… looks way younger… it’s Soda and me at the beach!), Darry clears his throat and suggests that it’s time for bed.

“School’s tomorrow.” Darry says, but even he downs the last of his beer and lingers in the kitchen for a handful of minutes, like he knows Dally’s something special. Like they all do.

Johnny puts on the shorts he keeps in his backpack, and borrows a t-shirt of Pony’s that probably belonged to Soda and his Dad before him before he curls up on the far end of the couch. Pony says goodnight and Soda weaves past him for one last smoke three times and Darry tells him he better get some rest. It’s dark outside, no sound but the floorboards creaking and Soda’s voice through the thin walls: quit stealing the blankets, Pony!

Dally comes in from outside smelling like cigarette smoke and Johnny’s almost half asleep, so he doesn’t notice much when Dally tugs the blanket from him.

“Nice meetin’ you, Johnny.” Dally says. Johnny’s head has found its way to his lap, he’s laying there like some sort of curled up kitten. Dally’s got gentle hands and a gentle heart; is humming love songs under his breath like prayers from the Bible.

“Thank you for beating those Socs up.” Johnny whispers. “And for bein’ the first queer I ever met.” Well, besides himself.

“Yeah,” Dally brushes his hands through Johnny’s hair. For a moment, Johnny flinches, but then he relaxes. It’s just Dally, Johnny reminds himself. He’s safe here. He’s okay. Because Dallas Winston never hurt anyone who didn’t hurt him first.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! If you liked it, please don't hesitate to leave a comment! They mean a lot! Especially since this is my first fic in The Outsiders fandom <3


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